Posts Tagged ‘economists’

Homer Economicus

March 19, 2010Jon Brooks 1 Comment »

From The Journal of Private Enterprise, an extract from the paper “Homer Economicus: Using The Simpsons to Teach Economics.”

Bureaucrats and bureaucracy
As Gwartney, Stroup, Sobel and Macpherson (2003, 135) state, “Economic analysis suggests a strong tendency for bureaucrats and public-sector employees to favor expanding their budgets beyond what would be considered economically efficient.” The Simpsons episode [...]

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EconTalk – Libertarian perspectives

March 11, 2010Jon Brooks No Comments »

Some of you have no doubt seen the “Fear the Boom and Bust” video featuring the rap stylings of economists John Maynard Keynes and Friedrich von Hayek, two economists with diametrically opposed viewpoints. To put the dispute in its most simplistic terms, Keynes thought government intervention was the only way out of economic downturns, and Hayek…not so much. (Think Paul Krugman vs. Ron Paul to get a picture of two contemporary acolytes of these schools of thought.)

In Wikipedia’s entry on Keynes, the section “Economics: out of favour 1979–2007” is followed by Economics: the Keynesian resurgence of 2008–2009.

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Bush tax cuts vs. Obama health care

March 4, 2010Jon Brooks 2 Comments »

From a recent post titled “What Are These Three Numbers” on the economics blog Econbrowser comes this chart:

bushtaxcutsobamahealth

“The first bar is the impact on the unified budget balance of the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act (EGTRRA) of 2001. (Ed. note: That’s the first Bush tax cut.) The second is the impact on the budget balance of the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act (JGTRRA) of 2003 (the second Bush tax cut). The third bar is the CBO estimated impact on the deficit of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act proposed in the Senate on November 19, for 2010-2019.”

These numbers, represented in billions of 2010 dollars, were taken from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office.

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Who’s to blame for deficits? Bush, Obama, or both?

February 17, 2010Jon Brooks No Comments »

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U.S. debt: Worse than you think

February 17, 2010Jon Brooks 1 Comment »

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“The economy is so bad…”

February 8, 2010Jon Brooks No Comments »

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Economists who contributed most to financial collapse

January 19, 2010Jon Brooks No Comments »

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The Stand-Up Economist

December 4, 2009Jon Brooks No Comments »

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Negative Norel

November 18, 2009Jon Brooks No Comments »

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DeLong: Another Great Depression possible

November 18, 2009Jon Brooks No Comments »

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